{"id":1103,"date":"2021-08-12T19:50:37","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T19:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultimatehealthreport.com\/adhd-pediatric-anxiety-project-cbd\/"},"modified":"2021-08-12T19:50:37","modified_gmt":"2021-08-12T19:50:37","slug":"adhd-pediatric-anxiety-project-cbd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultimatehealthreport.com\/adhd-pediatric-anxiety-project-cbd\/","title":{"rendered":"ADHD: Pediatric Anxiety | Project CBD"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div property=\"content:encoded\">\n<p><em>This article is adapted from Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana \u2013 Medical, Recreational and Scientific by Martin A. Lee<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The rise in marijuana\u2019s popularity among American youth since the late 1960s coincided with a surge in diagnosed cases of attention deficit disorder and its hyperactive variant, <span class=\"caps\">ADHD<\/span>, a condition that Dr. Tom O\u2019Connell likened to a \u201cpediatric anxiety syndrome.\u201d A retired thoracic surgeon and former captain in the <span class=\"caps\">U.S.<\/span> Army Medical Corps, O\u2019Connell had treated hundreds of wounded American soldiers during the Vietnam War. He came out of retirement in 2000 and began seeing medical-cannabis applicants in Oakland.<\/p>\n<p>Over the years, <span class=\"caps\">O\u2019C<\/span>onnell would compile a database and analyze usage patterns of six thousand patients. His findings would challenge both prohibitionists and drug-policy reformers who concurred that reefer ought to be a no-no for under-twenty-one-year-olds. \u201cEach side in the modern pot debate is wedded to its own fairytale,\u201d O\u2019Connell blogged. He bemoaned that reform leaders \u201cwere nearly as clueless as the Feds \u2014 and equally susceptible to doctrinaire thinking when it comes to adolescent drug initiation and usage.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pull-right\">\n<p>\u201cThe need to self-medicate symptoms of adolescent angst is much more important than simple youthful hedonism\u201d \u2013 Dr. Tom <span class=\"caps\">O\u2019C<\/span>onnell<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Why do some young people who experiment with cannabis become daily users? Are their claims of medical use credible? Dr. O\u2019Connell found that the vast majority of medical-marijuana applicants were already chronic users before they walked through the door of the dispensary. (People who try marijuana and have an unpleasant experience generally don\u2019t go to physicians for letters of recommendation.) The everyday smokers he interviewed had remarkably similar medical and social histories. O\u2019Connell determined that the main reason young people smoke cannabis on a regular basis is because it is a safe and effective way to relieve anxiety and other mood disorders associated with insecurity and low self-esteem.<\/p>\n<p>Repetitive drug use usually entails a more serious purpose than mere recreation, according to O\u2019Connell, who maintains that since the 1960s young Americans have embraced marijuana en masse to assuage the same emotional symptoms \u201cthat made anxiolytics, mood stabilizers and antidepressants Big Pharma\u2019s most lucrative products.\u201d \u201cThe need to self-medicate symptoms of adolescent angst is much more important than simple youthful hedonism,\u201d O\u2019Connell concluded.<\/p>\n<p>For America\u2019s youth, cannabis is like catnip for a cat, a poorly understood but nonetheless efficient herbal means of navigating the ambient anxiety and frenetic complexity of modern life. The emergence of marijuana as the anxiolytic drug of choice and its durable popularity among tense teens and anxious adults makes sense in light of scientific research that has documented the stress-buffering function of the endocannabinoid system.<\/p>\n<p>Whereas activation of the body\u2019s innate stress response (\u201cfight or flight\u201d) is essential for responding and adapting to acute survival threats, too much stress can damage an organism in the long run by depleting endocannabinoid tone. A compromised endocannabinoid system sets the stage for a myriad of disease symptoms and ups the risk of premature death. Chronically elevated stress levels boost anxiety and significantly hasten the progression of Alzheimer\u2019s dementia. Emotional stress has been shown to accelerate the spread of cancer. Stress alters how we assimilate fats.<\/p>\n<p>On a cellular level, stress is the body\u2019s response to any change that creates a physiological demand on it. When a person is stressed, the brain generates cortisol and other steroid hormones, which, in turn, trigger the release of naturally occurring marijuana-like compounds: anandamide and 2-<span class=\"caps\">AG<\/span>. These endogenous cannabinoids bind to primordial cell receptors that restore homeostasis by down-regulating the production of stress hormones. Marijuana, an herbal adaptogen, essentially does the same thing.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p><em>Martin A. Lee is the director of Project <span class=\"caps\">CBD<\/span> and the author of Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana \u2014 Medical, Recreational and Scientific.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Copyright, Project <span class=\"caps\">CBD<\/span>. May not be reprinted without permission.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.projectcbd.org\/adhd-pediatric-anxiety\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article is adapted from Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana \u2013 Medical, Recreational and Scientific by Martin A. Lee The rise in marijuana\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1104,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultimatehealthreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultimatehealthreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultimatehealthreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultimatehealthreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultimatehealthreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ultimatehealthreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultimatehealthreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultimatehealthreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultimatehealthreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultimatehealthreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}